Wednesday, April 29, 2015

I’ll never forget that day back in May of 2010. The phone rang with Siemens Building Products on the other end. “We hear you’re starting to make an impact in the fire alarm industry, and we want to discuss having you become a Siemens Value Added Partner", or VAP as distributors are known to Siemens. We had been having success selling another product, but in the fire alarm world Siemens was the big league and they wanted us. I know how professional players feel when they get called up to the majors because that was the call I had just received. I remember walking into Emile’s office and telling him the news then taking a while to get him to believe I wasn’t joking.

Since that time we have worked hard to earn the faith that they had given us to not only sell their products, but to do it in a professional manner, to truly represent them as a company with their history, and credibility expects. The partnership has been a very clear two way street, in support and training from them translating into product in the field from us. They have included us in many of their schools, internal product advisory committees, and international product launches & awards shows (usually held somewhere warm when it’s cold here). As I said we’re playing in the big league.

I was both surprised and pleased to find out we have become their third largest VAP in Canada. Having met many of the VAP’s at various functions across Canada I know we are working with some solid professional companies, and to be ranked that high among them is an honour, and have since jokingly told the two in front of us to watch out the herd is stampeding.

Getting where we are today has been accomplished by a lot of hard work and dedication from everyone at Bison Fire. The accolades are nice but our job is far from over. However continued support from our partners will make our goals much easier to reach.